Tuesday, 30 October 2012

The dust has barely settled after General
VK Singh’s Supreme Court battle to be army chief for another year. Now another
senior army general is approaching court with a petition that, if accepted,
could make him the next army chief instead of Lt Gen Dalbir Singh, the Eastern
Army commander who is currently in line.

Business Standard has learned that Lt Gen
Ravi Dastane, currently the Deputy Chief of the tri-service Integrated Defence
Staff, will shortly file a petition with the Armed Forces Tribunal, a
high-court level legal body that adjudicates on military matters.

“My client has been unfairly denied the
appointment of army commander, for which he fulfilled every condition. Instead,
a post was kept vacant for Lt Gen Dalbir Singh who was under a vigilance ban.
This was procedurally incorrect, and I will request the Honourable court to set
it aside,” says Major (Retired) Sudhansu Pande, who will represent Gen Dastane
in court.

After commanding the Leh-based 14 Corps in
2011-12, Gen Dastane is eligible to be appointed an army commander, a
pre-requisite for becoming army chief. The army has seven commands: six
geographical (northern, western, south-western, southern, central and eastern);
and one functional command, the Army Training Command or ARTRAC. There is also
the tri-service Andaman & Nicobar Command, which is commanded in turn by
officers from the army, navy and air force.

The key date in the current dispute is 31st
May 2012, when two army commanders’ posts fell vacant with the retirement of
former army chief, Gen VK Singh, and the western army commander, Lt Gen Shankar
Ghosh. Army records examined by Business Standard indicate that the three
senior-most generals on that day who were eligible to become army commanders
(the pre-requisite being that they must have commanded a corps) were, in order
of seniority: Lt Gen Dalbir Singh; followed by Lt Gen Sanjiv Chachra; followed
by Lt Gen Ravi Dastane.

As was widely reported in the media at the
time (and corroborated by Major Pande), Lt Gen Dalbir Singh was under a
discipline and vigilance (DV) ban, having received a show-cause notice from the
former army chief, Gen VK Singh, for a botched operation by the 3 Corps
Intelligence Unit under Dalbir’s command.

With Dalbir ineligible for elevation
because of the DV ban, the army appointed Chachra as western army commander (MS
Branch signal 388218/2012/MS(X)/79 dated 30th May 12). Dastane,
however, was not given the second army commander vacancy. Instead, it was kept
vacant until Lt Gen Dalbir Singh’s show cause notice was nullified on 8th
June by Gen Bikram Singh, who had taken over as army chief.

Dastane’s Statutory Complaint to the MoD,
filed on 6th August, objects to the differential standards applied,
in which one vacancy was filled by appointing Lt Gen Chachra, while “reserving”
one vacancy for Lt Gen Dalbir Singh, and granting him retrospective seniority.

“They appointed Lt Gen Chachra because he
was retiring on 31st May 12. But my client was as eligible as him,
and if Chachra was considered for army commanders’ appt on 31st May,
that concession should also have been given to me. The government could have
taken a stand that we will not appoint anyone before Dalbir’s show-cause notice
is resolved. But they considered and appointed Chachra,” points out Pande.

The next army commander’s vacancy arises
only on 31st January, by when Dastane would have less than two years
of residual service, rendering him ineligible as per current guidelines to be
appointed army commander.

Dastane’s lawyer says that his petition to
the Armed Forces Tribunal will plead for his promotion as army commander with
effect from 1st June 12, and that he be physically appointed to head
the next army command that falls vacant.

If this is granted, says Dastane’s lawyer,
the general will have a strong legal case to demand seniority above Dalbir
Singh, who was appointed only on 15th June. That would make Dastane
the senior-most qualified lieutenant general on 31st July 2014, when
the current chief, Gen Bikram Singh, retires. The MoD convention has long been
to appoint the senior-most qualified officer to succeed an outgoing chief.

The MoD’s viewpoint, say ministry sources,
is that Lt Gen Dalbir Singh’s claim was alive on 1st June, though
subject to a decision on his show-cause notice. The MoD, therefore, left one
army commander’s vacancy unfilled, in anticipation of a decision on the
show-cause notice.

The Indian Army fish is rotting from the
head. Memories are still fresh of the bruising confrontation earlier this year
between the politically ambitious General VK Singh and an inept government that
had precipitated a civil-military firestorm over the army chief’s quest for an
extra year in office. Now, as Broadsword reports (see article above) another
aggrieved general is going to court in his quest for the top job.

The current chief, General Bikram Singh,
who took over from the divisive General VK Singh in June, has singularly failed
to apply a healing touch and to undo the partisanship his predecessor
unleashed. Most new bosses, even sports coaches, are expected to provide a new
direction. In five months on the job, General Bikram Singh’s new direction
consists only of orders that officers must greet each other with the salutation
of “Jai Hind”, instead of merely giving each other the time of day. The new
chief also wants meetings to end with everyone chorusing “Bharat Mata ki Jai”.

Intelligence reports have not yet confirmed
that the Pakistani and Chinese militaries are quaking in their boots.

Let us be charitable; perhaps General
Bikram Singh needs more time. His arrival in Delhi was traumatic and uncertain,
since his predecessor assiduously sabotaged his elevation in the internecine
fighting that now seems to be a part of the game. Once in Delhi, the new
chief’s priority was to set himself up in the five-star style that now defines
our culture of generalship. In his first days in the hallowed office of legends
like General KC Thimayya and Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, the new chief and his
staff busied themselves with putting together a retinue of a dozen waiters,
cooks, dhobis and assorted tradesmen to sustain life in Army House.

Called upon for retainers, a bevy of army
formations milked out these retainers from combat units, where tough young
officers and the legendary Indian jawan have learned how to make do with the
dwindling resources that their own generals leave them. At least two senior
flag rank officers personally screened the men who would serve their chief,
knowing that a spilt drink or over-salted soup could reverberate unpleasantly
in their own careers.

The chief will naturally deny this since
none of these tradesmen are officially posted to Army House, his tony residence
on New Delhi’s leafy Rajaji Marg. Conveniently, this entourage is on “temporary
duty” with army units in the capital. But any visitor to Army House would find
them working there, just as visits to many army posts and picquets would find
combat soldiers cooking and washing instead of training and patrolling, simply
because their cook or dhobi is languishing in Delhi.

This travesty faces no resistance from
subordinate generals, many of whom are hardly angels themselves. Lieutenant
General Nobel Thamburaj, who headed the Southern Army, was arrested by the CBI
for gross irregularities concerning defence land. Two army chiefs, Generals
Deepak Kapoor and NC Vij, along with several army commanders, received illegal
flats in Mumbai’s infamous Adarsh Housing Society. Lieutenant General Shankar
Ghosh, the Western Army commander until June, had his medical category
downgraded last year, entitling him to disability pension. But when General VK
Singh’s confrontation with the government made dismissal a possibility, Ghosh
(then the senior-most army commander) upgraded his medical category to be
eligible for a move to Army House.

If the generals believe that these
shenanigans go unnoticed by junior officers or the rank and file, they are
mistaken. The recent face-offs between officers and enlisted men in military
bases near Samba, Amritsar and Leh suggest a decline in the ironclad faith that
the army jawan has always had in his leaders. Today’s culture of entitlement at
the top, where funds, resources and manpower are poured into supporting the
five-star lifestyles of a few dozen senior generals, threatens to seep
downwards poisoning the entire system. It is difficult to remain idealistic,
motivated and dead straight --- the defining characteristics of young Indian
officers --- when so much wrongdoing is evident at the top. Even honest
officers are inevitably corrupted by a system in which outright financial
dishonesty is condoned as “perks and privileges of office”.

As worrying as the corruption is the lack
of intellectual direction that generals provide the army’s young leaders. This
was evident from the recent flood of chain emails between mid-level and junior
officers, expressing outrage that the army was being blamed in the media for
the 1962 debacle. In the intellectual desert that the generals have made the
army, every red-blooded officer has bought into the “Haqeeqat myth”, in which
gallant soldiers, badly deployed by incompetent politicians and bureaucrats,
mowed down hordes of Chinese before laying down their lives. While this is true
in several cases, there are many more cases of entire Indian sub-units fleeing
from strong defensive positions into waiting Chinese ambushes. Any professional
military studies its defeats even more deeply than its victories. But
professional study is not on the army’s agenda. The generals believe that
officers and men must be busy with creating the illusion of command success,
howsoever transient. With no time to read or guidance and inspiration from the
top, human development is merely a buzzword.

Preening incongruously amidst this
crumbling edifice, General Bikram Singh has taken his media managers’
ill-considered advice that controversies are best dealt with by avoiding the
press. General VK Singh’s mistake lay in seeking out the media say the same
advisors who had advised the previous chief. But with controversy increasingly
swirling, the army’s leadership can no longer deal with its growing image
problem by sticking its head in the sand.

Italian defence company, Finmeccanica, is
grappling with allegations that kickbacks were paid in group company
AgustaWestland’s Euro 560 million (Rs 3,880 crore) sale to India of twelve
AW101 VVIP helicopters, which are intended to fly Indian dignitaries in safety
and comfort.

Given the MoD’s penchant for “blacklisting”
arms vendors suspected of wrongdoing, the defence industry is watching
developments with bated breath. Any ban on Finmeccanica would mean that recent
contracts won by group companies would be up for grabs again.

Hanging by a thread is a torpedo contract
won by Finmeccanica company, WASS, which could very well be worth a billion
dollars. On the verge of being signed is a Rs 1,700 crore contract for 98
Blackshark heavyweight torpedoes for the navy’s six Scorpene submarines. This
could lead to an automatic order for 98 more torpedoes for the navy’s next six
conventional submarines that will be built under Project 75I. And India’s
nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) fleet, which will feature six
submarines like the INS Arihant, would require another 98 torpedoes. At stake
here, therefore, is more than Rs 5,000 crore.

The heavyweight torpedo is the Scorpene’s
primary armament against enemy warships. Fired from six torpedo tubes, a
battery propels it through the water, homing in on vessels that are up to 50
kilometres away.

India’s order is make-or-break for the
world’s two big builders of electrical torpedoes --- WASS and German company,
Atlas Electroniks. “This potential Indian order is crucial for the future of
the heavyweight electrical torpedo industry. It is larger than all the other
international orders combined,” says an expert on the global naval weapons
trade.

Atlas Electroniks
has repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, challenged the MoD’s Jan 12th
2010 selection of WASS’s Blackshark torpedo, at the expense of Atlas’ Seahake
torpedo. On Jan 19th, Atlas complained officially to Shashi Kant
Sharma (who headed the MoD’s acquisition wing and is now the defence secretary)
accusing the MoD of rigging the selection to favour WASS; Atlas, says the
complaint, was brought in only to create a false impression of multi-vendor
procurement.

Atlas says the
MoD’s tender (Request for Proposal, or RfP) makes the vendor “responsible for
seamless integration and/or interface of the torpedo with the (Scorpene
submarine’s) combat system.” The Blackshark alone fulfilled this requirement,
since it was developed by WASS in collaboration with DCNS, which builds the
Scorpene.

This, pointed out
Atlas, violates the Defence Procurement Procedure, which states (in Para 13)
that the user requirements “must not prejudice the technical choices by being
narrow and tailor made.”

Atlas buttresses
its allegations of a rigged procurement by pointing out that the MoD’s
Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) had cleared its plan for integrating the
Blackhake torpedo into the Scorpene submarine; but then rejected it in field
trials (termed No Cost No Commitment, or NCNC trials) in which the torpedo was
physically operated and verified). If the TEC had rejected Atlas, this would
have been single-vendor procurement, requiring a special sanction. But the DPP (Para
70(a) of Chapter 1) says that if more than one vendor is cleared by the TEC,
the procurement would not be deemed single-vendor even if only one vendor
clears the user trials.

“We now have got
the strong impression that a procedure has been engineered here, where ATLAS
has been taken through to the NCNC stage with an intention of rejecting ATLAS
at this stage. Unfortunately, the reason for rejection conflicts with what has
previously been accepted by the TEC and approved by the MOD”, Atlas wrote to the
Acquisitions Wing.

Atlas’ flurry of
complaints to the MoD’s Acquisitions Wing; the Central Vigilance Commission
(CVC); and to Minister of State for Defence MM Pallam Raju, have all been
rejected.

Sources close to
WASS point out that MoD had little choice but to lay down that the torpedo must
be compatible with the Scorpene, since the torpedo was being bought for use in
that submarine.

DCNS, the Scorpene
vendor, which had also co-developed the Blackshark with WASS, wrote to the MoD
warning that the Indian Navy might face a delay in the first two Scorpene
submarines if Atlas’ Blackhake torpedo was to be integrated onto them. At that
stage, the Scorpene programme was already running three years late.

The outcome: in
field trials, the MoD rejected Atlas’ plan for integrating the Blackhake onto
the Scorpene, a plan that it had accepted during technical evaluation. And
WASS’s commercial bid for the Blackshark torpedo was the only one that the MoD
opened.

“The Italians and
the French obviously worked together to make this happen. And this has opened
the door for WASS to charge an arbitrary price, since this has become a single
vendor procurement,” says Commodore Arvind Mathur, the former head of the
Scorpene Project who has worked with Atlas Electroniks on this tender.

WASS was contacted
for comments but refused to make any statement.

The flow of leaks from an Italian
investigation into Finmeccanica’s Indian dealings has placed the MoD on edge.
And amongst those with stakes in this contract, nobody has forgotten that on
March 05th 2012, the MoD had banned four global arms vendors from
doing business with the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), even though wrongdoing
has not been proved.

Wednesday, 24 October 2012

The generals complain about excessive financial oversight. They have only themselves to blame as it is set to become even more onerous

By Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 24th Oct 12

A wide-ranging audit by the defence
ministry’s official auditors, the Controller of Defence Accounts (CDA), has
sharply criticised the mismanagement of funds by the army’s senior-most commanders.
Former army chief (and now anti-corruption crusader) General VK Singh, and the
current army chief, General Bikram Singh, are amongst those that the CDA
incriminates in financial mismanagement.

Defence Minister AK Antony has responded by
curbing the financial powers of army commanders. These generals must now clear
proposed purchases from a Financial Advisor (FA), who will be a civilian
official in the MoD. The army often complains about excessive financial
oversight; now this is set to become even more onerous.

Business Standard has reviewed a copy of
the CDA’s audit report, which has not been made public by the MoD. The MoD and
the army both declined to comment on the report and its fallout.

The audit relates to special funds
allocated to the army’s six theatre commanders, including money that they can
expend under the Army Commander’s Special Financial Powers (ACSFP) for “urgent
procurement in situations of operational urgency”. This is not the first time
that mismanagement of these funds by senior generals has been flagged. In 2008,
then army chief General Deepak Kapoor allegedly scuttled a probe into his
expenditure of these funds during his tenure as northern army commander.
Kapoor’s famously upright successor, Lt Gen HS Panag, who initiated the probe,
was summarily shifted from northern command to central command.

The defence minister had backed General
Kapoor in 2008, but this time Antony himself has ordered the CDA, the MoD’s
apex accounting and audit body, to audit the expenditure of special funds by
the army’s theatre commanders. The northern army commander, engaged in
year-round operations, has the largest annual budget of Rs 125 crore. The
eastern army commander gets Rs 50 crore per annum. The western, south-western,
central and southern army commanders get Rs 10 crores each.

Operationally committed commands also get
“General Service funds”, meant for generating military intelligence. These
funds, which amount to tens of crores, are not subject to any audit.

General Bikram Singh, the current chief,
and his predecessor General VK Singh, both commanded the eastern army during
the period that the audit covers: 2009-2010 and 2010-2011.

The CDA audit, which covers 55 financial
transactions, reports violations to the tune of Rs 103 crores. Worryingly, this
might be just the tip of the iceberg. The audit report notes that, “None of the
Army Commanders have furnished complete data on the total number of cases where
delegated financial powers were exercised by them under various heads. They have
forwarded data relating to those sanctions only which costed Rs 50 Lakh and
above.”

The vast majority of irregularities relate
to the Northern Command. Bizarrely, the purchase of milk forms a major
component of the auditors’ objections. But the CDA has also pointed to the
purchase of items from “trading firms/agents instead of directly from OEM
vendors,” in violation of army regulations. The audit report also notes that
the supply of these items is delayed “in practically all cases.” This,
according to the report, “substantially defeated the objective for which these
(financial) powers were delegated to command HQrs (headquarters).”

The CDA audit notes the fact that the
failure of regular military procurement channels often forces army commanders
to make emergency purchases under special financial powers. It states that, “If
stores are made available in time, it would not be necessary for Army
Commanders to exercise these powers.”

Defence experts point out that the army’s
logistics system remains a relic of the 1950s and 1960s, when few supplies were
available in remote border areas. The tradition of central, rather than local,
logistics still continues, even though areas like Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh
now have significant local infrastructure.

The private sector’s much tom-tommed opening
into defence production, via the Future Infantry Combat Vehicle (FICV), intended
to replace the army’s 2,600 BMP-2s at an estimated cost of Rs 50,000 crore,
faces an uncertain future. The defence ministry (MoD) is contemplating
scrapping the current tender and restarting anew. This comes after sitting for
two years on the FICV proposals from three private sector consortia and one
public sector entity.

In early 2010, the MoD invited Tata Motors,
the Mahindra Group, Larsen & Toubro and the MoD-owned Ordnance Factory
Board (OFB) to submit proposals to develop an FICV, a lightly armoured vehicle
that carries infantry into battle alongside tank columns. After evaluating the
four proposals, the MoD was to short-list two “development partners” who would
then compete to develop a prototype each. The better of the two would be
selected for the army.

But the MoD’s Acquisitions Wing, which must
make the short list, now complains that the tender (called an Expression of
Interest, or EoI) did not define the criteria by which the winners would be
selected. It wants a fresh EoI to be issued, with the criteria specified.

The wing cites the Defence Procurement
Procedure (DPP) of 2008, where Para 22 of the “Make” category, covering the
FICV project, says: “The EoI should also lay down the broad parameters of the
evaluation process and acceptance criterion for the system under development.”

But the MoD brass
realises that cancelling the EoI (drawn up in the ministry) and going back to
2010 would involve a serious loss of credibility. Besides, the “Make” category
itself outlines the acceptance criteria, specifying that, “the contribution of
the Indian industry in the critical technology areas should be the key
criterion in assessment of various proposals.”

The three private sector companies worry
that restarting afresh would result in the loss of at least 18 months to two
years, as the MoD prepares a new EoI and then goes through a fresh evaluation
process. Meanwhile, the project teams the proposed vendors have set up for the project
would continue to bleed money.

“We have already spent about Rs 28 crores
on the FICV project. Now we will have to evaluate our options to see how this
programme is going to roll out. It has already been delayed by two years and we
foresee at least another year’s delay,” says Brigadier (Retired) Khutab Hai,
who heads the Mahindra Group’s defence business.

The “Make”
category of the DPP lays down the procedure for Indian industry to develop
“high technology, complex systems”, in order to “ensure Indigenous Research,
Design, Development and Production of capabilities sought by the Armed Forces.”

It also mandates that the MoD will fund 80%
of the cost of developing each of the two FICV prototypes, while the
short-listed vendors will pay 20% each. While the cost of developing and
manufacturing 2600 FICVs can only be roughly estimated, senior executives from
two of the competing companies estimate that the bill would add up to about Rs
50,000 crores. This makes it India’s biggest-ever indigenous project.

According to the EoI, reviewed by Business
Standard, the FICV has been conceived as a
multi-role platform that must perform three roles. Firstly, it must be a
battle-taxi that provides “mobility in battle for infantry, so that it can keep
pace with armour.” Secondly, it must “(p)rovide fire-support to the
assaulting/dismounted infantry,” i.e. spray the enemy with machine gun and
cannon fire as the dismounted infantrymen charge at them. Thirdly, and most
ambitiously, the FICV should hold its own on the mechanised battlefield, even
against much more heavily armed tanks. According to the specifications, the
FICV should “destroy enemy tanks, infantry or fortifications in conjunction
with armour or independently.”

The FICV must also have “adequate
amphibious capability for crossing of water obstacles like canals, rivers and
stretches of sea”; and be “air portable” (i.e. in a transport aircraft’s cargo
hold, or slung under a helicopter with chains). Its firepower must include a
“fire-and-forget” third generation missile, a cannon and machine guns, which
are operated through a “digital fully integrated fire control system with state
of the art sensors and all weather surveillance devices.”

This would allow the FICV to destroy enemy
tanks more than 4 kilometres away, well before the tank can engage the FICV
with its main gun. The EoI also demands the capability to destroy “attack
helicopters and low flying fixed wing aircraft.”

Saturday, 20 October 2012

China's well-coordinated hearts-and-minds campaign was greeted with suspicion by the people of NEFA (now Arunachal)

By
Ajai Shukla and Sonia Trikha Shukla

Business Standard, 20th Oct 12

It was the 19th of November, 1962. The
sounds of battle were still audible, echoing through the valleys. The previous
two days had been nightmarish for 9-year-old Phurpa Lhamu, an eruption of
artillery and machine gun fire in the hills around the idyllic Sangti valley.
Chinese columns were converging here, pushing back the Indian Army frontally.
Simultaneously they were rounding the Indians, ambushing them from the rear and
converting every bottleneck into a bloody killing ground.

Even
more terrifying for Phurpa was the absence of the village youngsters, who the
Gaon Bura (the village elder, referred to universally as GB) had rounded up and
sent off to haul ammunition to the army’s forward posts. For three days and nights,
almost without a break, they had ferried supplies to the Indian picquets at
Thembang and Chhander. This had served no purpose; the advancing Chinese had
blown away those positions in a night. And the retreating Indians had walked
into their ambushes.

Peering
out of her window in the early morning light, Phurpa saw two lines of soldiers,
in battle fatigues, moving cautiously down the twin spurs that led down to
Sangti. At first she assumed they were Indians but, as they came closer, she
realized that they walked differently, more spread out and weapons at the
ready. Even when they were in plain sight and she could see their Chinese
features, the awful reality took some time to sink in: the People’s Liberation
Army (PLA) was here in Sangti. The Indian Army was gone. Nobody knew, or was
ready for, what might lie ahead.

As
the Chinese crossed the Sangti Nala and approached the village, Phurpa saw the
elders walk out to greet the Chinese, holding out khatas (white silk scarves) in the
traditional Buddhist welcome. Phurpa could hardly believe her eyes. These were
the monsters who, just three years earlier, had tried to kill His Holiness the
Dalai Lama in Lhasa, causing tens of thousands of Tibetans to flee their
homeland, passing through the Dirang and Sangti valleys on their way to new
lives as refugees in India.

Phurpa Lhamu from Sangti recounts her experiences under Chinese occupation

But
here the Chinese were, bowing politely and accepting khatas, behaving for the world like
honoured visitors. And for a full month to come, they would continue to live in
the area, cultivating the villagers, fetching water, harvesting crops and even
holding feasts. But the PLA would never succeed in gaining the trust of locals
or in becoming a part of their lives.

In
all the writing that has come out of the 1962 war, and in the popular Indian
imagination, that disaster appears to have unfolded in a freezing, uninhabited,
high-altitude desert where a star cast of ill-prepared soldiers struggled
manfully to implement ill-judged orders from misguided politicians and
bureaucrats. This is true to some extent in Ladakh. But the North East Frontier
Agency, or NEFA --- as Arunachal Pradesh was called in those days --- is also
the story of an Indian people who were abandoned to the Chinese by the Indian
army and administration that had neither the grit nor the capacity to stay with
the people that they had made their own.

Forgotten
in the shame of 1962 are the stories of the Monpas of Monyul; the Membas of
Menchuka and the Mishmis of Walong. These are the only Indians who have lived
under foreign occupation since independence.

And
when Indians cringe at Nehru’s abandonment of Assam in the face of China’s
advance --- his infamous response, in an All-India Radio Broadcast, was, “My
heart goes out to the people of Assam” --- how much shoddier then was the treatment
of NEFA’s people who did not even rate a pro forma mention.

On 22nd
October, the Chinese swept into Tawang, quickly consolidating control over that
densely populated valley. In a second offensive on 18-20th November,
the PLA captured the areas beyond Sela --- the fertile Dirang valley, Bomdi La,
the Rupa-Tenga valleys, Kalaktang, and all the way down to the eponymous
Foothills, on the border of Assam. After declaring a unilateral cease-fire on
the midnight of 20th November, the Chinese stayed in Dirang and
Tawang till the end of December, governing Tawang for two months, and Dirang
for a month. Simultaneously, the PLA occupied the Menchuka valley, and the
Walong valley, along with small enclaves elsewhere. Here too, they governed
till the end of December.

Telling
the story of China’s short-lived rule over these areas is not just an act of
catharsis or self-realisation. It is also the story of India’s only real
victory of 1962, where China’s spectacular military success was rendered
meaningless by the refusal of NEFA’s people to warm to the conquerors or to
succumb to their blandishments. In that war, as in those of the 21st
century conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, victory was less about destroying
military forces, than about winning the public affection.

The
PLA had come prepared to fight, and also to win hearts and minds through a
coordinated, made-in-Beijing, public relations campaign. This was uniformly
implemented, down to the last phrase, across all the areas that they occupied
in 1962. Our research across the Tawang area; in Menchuka, and in Walong and
Kibithoo in the eastern corner of Arunachal Pradesh, finds locals recounting
exactly the same phrases that the PLA soldiers used while dealing with the
people of NEFA.

In
the confusion of defeat after the Namka Chu battle on Oct 20, 1962, as Monpas
fled Tawang on the heels of the army and the administration, it was easy to be
overtaken by the fleet-footed PLA patrols. The Monpas who were caught, and
those who stayed behind because they were too poor, old or infirm to leave,
found the Chinese giving them a uniform message. Tashi Khandu, who went on to
become an MLA in Arunachal Pradesh, stayed on in his village, Kitpi. According
to him, the Chinese would regularly say, “Our fight is with the Indian
government, not with the people of Tawang. Look at you and look at us: we are
the same people.”

There
seemed to be little recognition, or at any rate acknowledgement, amongst the
PLA soldiers and apparatchiks, of the bitter anti-Communist feeling amongst the
Buddhists of NEFA (and Chinese ingress was almost entirely in Buddhist areas).
With the Monpas having actually seen the Dalai Lama pass through the villages
of Tawang after entering India at Khinzemane in March 1959; and after hearing
first-hand from Tibetan refugees about the PLA’s brutal subjugation; there were
few Monpa buyers for the PLA’s simplistic thesis that the Chinese and the
Monpas were one people.

But
the Monpas’ inherent politeness, combined with a sense of self-preservation,
held back the local people from countering the Chinese propaganda. As Phurpa
Tsering of Dirang points out, “Our elders met the Chineses soldiers with khatas
(silk scarfs), not because they were happy to see them but because they were
community leaders, responsible for their people, who had to work with whoever
was in charge.”

Along
with political commissars, the PLA contingents in each area were equipped with
Monpa-speaking translators, usually Monpas from Tsona just across the McMahon
Line. This made the locals even more suspicious of the Chinese. Tashi Khandu
says, “Since they had translators, none of us spoke while the Chinese were
offered tea. And when we spoke, we made sure we said nothing that would anger
them.”

But
the Chinese --- who favourably contrasted the Monpas’ cheerful cooperation with
the sullen resentment that they continued to face in Tibet after the 1959
revolt --- believed they were making headway in winning hearts and minds.
During the period of occupation, the PLA’s young soldiers routinely offered to
help locals till their fields, harvest the crop, and even gifted them clothes.
Leaving a vessel full of water on the doorstep of an elderly Monpa was another
PLA tactic.

Even
as the Monpas subconsciously rejected these gestures, there was admiration for
the discipline that the PLA displayed, especially when contrasted with the
unseemly flight of the defeated Indian Army. The Chinese would always dress
smartly, and they would never ask the locals to work as porters, something that
the Indian Army of that time regarded as a natural privilege. Although most of
the Chinese soldiers were very young, not a single case was recounted of
misbehaviour with Monpa women. Anything taken from the locals was scrupulously
paid for.

But
while generating respect, the PLA failed to generate trust. As the Chinese pull
out neared, the PLA invited local notables for bara khanas (community feasts) in all the
big villages. There was little choice but to show up, but as one invitee
recounts, “We drank their liquor, but nobody ate their food. Everybody believed
the Chinese were serving us dog meat”.

Poised
to leave in December, before the passes were closed by snowfall, the PLA sent
out a farewell message: “We are going now but rest assured, we will return.
This is a part of China and we know that you are not happy with what the Indian
government has done for you. But the Chinese government will be different. We
will look after your interests.”

Lekie,
who lives in Thembang village on the route of Chinese invasion, describes her
response: “We
were happy that China was leaving and that the government of India would come
back. Even though India’s officials and army had run away we knew they would do
good for us when they returned. But if the Chinese were to stay, we were afraid
that they would kill us.”

Such
steadfastness from a people who had experienced Indian administration for
barely a decade, and who had very recently been abandoned, did not occur by
accident. Its stemmed from India’s restrained and sensitive non-interference
with local tradition, a policy backed by Nehru himself, his powerful tribal
affairs advisor, Verrier Elwin, and a superb cadre of officers that was
organised in 1953 into the Indian Frontier Administrative Service. The
sophistication of this policy is reflected in an entry in Elwin’s diaries,
which remarks on Nehru’s belief that this frontier was not necessarily India,
but it could be made so.

That
belief has been vindicated. The People’s Republic of China continues to
struggle in Tibet, the underlying reason for China’s military attack in 1962.
Notwithstanding India’s military defeat, Arunachal is today a full-fledged and
enthusiastic Indian state and the only one amongst the Seven Sisters of the
northeast that has never had a separatist movement. In 1962, the Chinese guns
spoke, scattering the Indians. But the people of NEFA spoke too, and they have
won India the war.

Top: Dilip Donde and Abhilash Tomy, guru and chela, pose together on the eve of Tomy's epic voyage

By Ajai Shukla

On board the Mhadei, at INS Mandovi, Goa

Even the most hard-boiled sailors believe
that it takes an unusual, and somewhat eccentric, person to circle the globe in
a sailboat, dealing single-handedly for months on end with the capriciousness
of the wind, the waves and the weather. Three years ago, Commander Dilip Donde,
a naval officer, became the first Indian to sail solo around the world, making
his epic journey in a 56-foot, Indian sailboat, the Mhadei. On Nov 1st,
Donde’s former crewmember, Lieutenant Commander Abhilash Tomy, will set sail
from Mumbai on an even more hazardous voyage: a solo, non-stop circumnavigation
of the world.

Less than 80 humans have completed such a
passage. Compared to this, more than 525 humans have travelled to space; and
some 500 mountaineers summit Mount Everest during an average climbing season.

Like no other sport, solo sailing pits a
lone human against the elements, with the dice loaded heavily in favour of
nature. The inflexible conditions that govern a solo, non-stop circumnavigation
require Tomy to traverse at least 21,600 nautical miles (or 40,000 kilometres)
under sail, without any form of engine power, with no halts, starting and
ending at the same port, and crossing the three great southern capes: Cape
Leeuwin (Australia); Cape Horn (South America); and Cape Agulhas (Africa).

The Mhadei, sailing into Cape Town on Dilip Donde's circumnavigation in 2010

I sail out on the Mhadei in Goa, as Donde
and Tomy carry out a pre-voyage check. They are clearly a comfortable team,
chattering constantly yet giving each other respect and space. Donde the
veteran is a grizzled greybeard, tanned and fit, with an easy laugh that lights
up his face. Tomy is 33, at that magical cusp of life where youth has married
experience and confidence. Lithe, powerful, alert and yet strangely calm, he
glides barefoot around the Mhadei like a gazelle on steroids.

It is hot and still outside Goa, and Tomy
scours the sea with a weather eye. “There’s some breeze,” he calls to Donde,
pointing to a patch of sea that appears darker than where we are. We head there
and the Mhadei’s sail billows as it catches the wind.

The calm Goa sea will be a distant memory
as Tomy heads south across the Indian Ocean, crossing the Tropic of Capricorn
to the longitudes south of Australia and New Zealand. This is the dreaded
Southern Ocean where there is no land to stop the freezing trade winds, only
Antarctica a couple of thousand miles away. The trade winds push forward a
sailboat, but also pile up the ocean into forbidding mountains and valleys of
water. Through this grey landscape Tomy will steer the Mhadei, a speck in the
bleakness that must somehow keep afloat.

Mhadei sails past the Royal Navy destroyer, HMS York, near the Falklands Islands

Donde inexplicably smiles as he describes
sailing the Mhadei through the Southern Ocean, rolling and pitching in an
unending succession of 20-foot waves that are almost as tall as the main mast.
One moment the boat wallows in a trough, with 20-foot walls of water on either
side; seconds later the boat crests the wave, providing a view of unbroken
ocean. And then it drops sickeningly into the next trough with the sailor
wondering whether it can ever climb out.

What about seasickness, I ask queasily.
“The only way to avoid being sea-sick is to remain sitting under a tree,” says
Tomy, pokerfaced.

*
* * *

The saga of the Mhadei has been the story
of four unusual men. It began in the imagination of one of the navy’s crustiest
old salts, Vice Admiral Manohar Prahlad Awati, who, from his retirement home
near Pune badgered successive naval chiefs about the need for the Indian Navy
to achieve the Holy Grail of sailing: solo circumnavigation. In 2006, Admiral
Arun Prakash gave the green signal, allocating a Rs 6 crore budget and asking
Awati to mastermind the project. The navy sent out a call for volunteers.

Enter Commander Dilip Donde, a diving expert
posted in the Andamans, who had sailed only recreationally. He claims he
volunteered to “be a part of the project” but, since he was the only volunteer,
ended up as the skipper.

“I broke the cardinal rule that I had been
taught since I was a cadet: never volunteer! Why, I don’t know. Maybe, at 38, I
faced an early midlife crisis. Or maybe it just sounded like a fun idea,” he
laughs.

For Awati, though, this was deadly serious
and he quickly enlisted the expertise of one of the world’s greatest sailors,
Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, a yachting hall-of-fame member who first completed a
solo, non-stop circumnavigation of the globe in 1968-69, when he sailed his
Mumbai-built teak-wood boat, Suhaili, around the world in 313 days.

Donde was sent to the UK, where he worked
with Knox-Johnston, learning from scratch about building and kitting out an
ocean-going sailboat and sailing it single-handedly through the worst storms on
the seas. In consultation with Knox-Johnston --- whose imagination had been
captured by the project --- Donde framed the specifications for what would
become the Mhadei.

“The Indian Navy was making a statement to
the world. So we decided not to make the boat in steel; we chose high-tech
fibreglass instead,” he says.

With a design bought from Dutch bureau Van
Der Stadt, the navy had then to identify a boat-builder who could construct a
vessel that would survive even a battering from the Southern Ocean. Big warship
builders like Goa Shipyard turned down the offer as too small and commercially
unviable. That was when an extraordinary shipbuilder, Ratnakar Dandekar, who
was running a tiny shipyard called Aquarius Fiberglas Private Ltd, walked onto
the project. The Mhadei had found its mother.

We take the ferry to Divar Island, the whitewashed
churches and convents around the Basilica of Bom Jesus peeping over a curtain
of lush green palms. Here, in the shadow of the Konkan Railway bridge over the
Mandovi River (called the Mhadei at its source in Karnataka), Dandekar welcomes
us to Aquarius Fiberglas.

“I can honestly say that I had no idea of
what I was taking on when I contracted to build the Mhadei. But I just knew
that this was a once-in-a-lifetime project. No boat of this quality and
endurance had ever been built in India. Today, while I am still a small
shipbuilder, nobody questions my technological credentials,” says Dandekar.

Donde describes Dandekar’s embrace of the
project, an enthusiasm that quickly swept away commercial considerations.
Dandekar listens with a quizzical half-smile, apparently wondering why any of
this should be surprising.

“The Mhadei is completely mine; I built it.
When some work is required on this boat, I don’t need a tender… I feel a real
attachment to this boat. Building the Mhadei has changed me as a shipbuilder,
as a person and as a businessman,” he says.

The ferry to Divar Island, across the Mandovi. This river is called the Mhadei at its source in Karnataka and gives the boat its name

As we tour Aquarius, which now employs 84
workers compared to just 16 when it built the Mhadei, a special train carrying
trucks to Mangalore on roll-on-roll-off wagons thunders over the bridge. I
wonder: is the Mhadei a superbly planned project, or was it just blessed with
worthy people?

*
* * *

Now the next chapter of the Mhadei story,
so far a saga of unalloyed success, will be written by Abhilash Tomy, who
formed the shore support team when Donde went around the globe in 2009-10.
Tomy, however, will have no shore support team; his will be a non-stop voyage.
This increases the difficulty manifold, since everything that malfunctions must
be repaired on board.

The Mhadei itself seems ready, a battle-tested
veteran. Success, therefore, will largely rest on the skipper’s mental
conditioning. “You can keep preparing for ten years. But you are only going to
learn some things when you actually do it,” agrees Tomy.

The Mhadei is as sleek, high-tech and well-kept
a sailboat as any I’ve seen. There are dual steering wheels, covered with
Chamois leather to provides a grip even in the wettest, coldest weather. In
front of the wheel is an array of instruments, including an automatic
identification system (AIS), which tracks through satellite every ship on the
seas, relaying its name, course, destination, vessel type, registration and
crew. While much of the Mhadei’s journeys are through isolated seas, it does
encounter other vessels at the chokepoints of the great capes.

Tomy recounts an incredulous radio call to Donde from a supertanker that was crossing the Cape of Good Hope in a driving storm
and discovered on their AIS that a small boat, the Mhadei, was close by.

Supertanker: Confirm port of origin?

Mhadei: Mumbai

Supertanker: Confirm destination?

Mhadei: Mumbai

Supertanker: Confirm type of vessel?

Mhadei: Sailboat

Supertanker: Confirm crew?

Mhadei: One man

Supertanker: Confirm crazy!!

Apparently, this brand of gallows humour
provides comfort to lone sailors! I ask Tomy whether a wife or a girlfriend
will be praying for him while he sails. “As a good sailor, the first thing you
learn is not to tie a knot that you cannot untie quickly,” he shoots back.

Waiting for him instead will be his mother
and his father, himself a former naval officer. Twice a day, Tomy will email a
“sitrep (situation report) over an INMARSAT satellite link to naval
headquarters in Delhi. If he needs to send video, or talk to someone, there is
a bigger FB-500 fleet broadband system. But that is expensive and Tomy is very
budget-conscious.

What’s to talk, he asks? Anything that goes
wrong must be fixed on board. Inside the cabin is a small workbench with a
vice, and spanners hanging below, stuck into a orange rexine organiser. In
another corner is the galley, the navy’s grandiose monicker for a small gas
stove. On the wall are plaques, presented by authorities in places like Cape
Town, Fremantle (Australia) and Littleton (New Zealand), the ports of calls for
vessels like the Mhadei.

After signing the Mhadei’s visitors’ book,
I leaf back through previous comments. On Feb 21st, 2009, Sir
Robin Knox-Johnston had endorsed the ultimate compliment: “A nice strong boat
to sail around the world!” All of us should pray that he is right.

Tuesday, 16 October 2012

The Nyamjang Chu river, just after it flows into India at Khinzemane, near the Namka Chu, where the Sino-Indian war of 1962 began

By Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 16th Oct 12

Who won the 1962 Sino-Indian war? This
might seem a fatuous question, especially to those reeling under the tsunami of
gloomy articles leading into the 50th anniversary of the war that
began on the Namka Chu rivulet on Oct 20th, 1962. But consider this
fact: since 1962 Arunachal Pradesh has turned increasingly Indian, emphatically
regarding itself a part of this country. Meanwhile, Tibet simmers resentfully
as Beijing’s relationship with those easygoing people is conducted through the
might of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA); a plethora of truncheon-happy
Chinese paramilitaries that arrest protesters before they can protest; a
demographic invasion by hundreds of thousands of ethnic Han Chinese workers; and
a coercive relocation of locals that has shattered traditional pastoral
lifestyles.

So how is it that, even after having been
whipped in war, India is winning the peace? And that China, despite having
“taught India a lesson” in 1962, and having subdued Tibet with a brutal
occupation, feels challenged today from both sides of the McMahon Line --- the
disputed border in the Eastern Himalayas between Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh.
In Tibet, since 2008, Beijing confronts a rising tide of protest. And in India it
sees a growing military build up, and a Tibetan exile organisation that
amplifies worldwide the repression that China perpetuates within Tibet.

In contrast, India’s restraint and
sensitivity and reluctance to use military force in establishing administration
across the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) --- as Arunachal was then called
--- certainly won over locals to the idea of India, but it also contained
within it the seeds of the 1962 defeat. The aversion to overt demonstration of
force was evident during India’s 1951 occupation of Tawang, when Assistant
Political Officer, R Kathing, marched into that border town with just one
platoon (36 soldiers) of the paramilitary Assam Rifles.

And at Achingmori in 1953, when Tagin
tribals massacred an Assam Rifles platoon, Nari Rustomji, the Special Advisor
to the Governor of Assam who administered NEFA, famously stopped Nehru from
retaliating with a burn-and-slash military expedition or executing his threat
to bomb the Tagins. Instead, Rustomji sent a largely civilian expedition into
Tagin country, arrested the culprits, convicted them after a procedurally
impeccable trial in a makeshift bamboo courthouse, and jailed them for a few
years. Word spread quickly across the area.

But placing local sensibilities above
national security also created the mindset that led to the 1962 defeat. The
same mistrust in force that won over the local people also underlay the
reluctance to deploy the army in adequate numbers, even though that was
essential for backstopping an ill-considered “forward policy” that involved
establishing Indian posts along a unilaterally decided border. The result: a
stinging military defeat for India that undermined its image in local eyes.

Today, 50 years later, with a wealthier and
more assertive India comfortable with the idea of deploying and wielding
military power, it is important to remember the lessons of the 1950s in
planning how to counter any Chinese adventurism. Firstly, in-your-face military
deployment is not something that Arunachalis are comfortable with, even though
the military is sometimes the only government that tribal people in remote
areas actually see. In the 2010s and 2020s as in the 1950s and 1960s, local
support for India will count for as much as military power in ensuring that
Arunachal remains a part of India.

India’s military, like every
self-perpetuating bureaucracy, has made a convincing case for raising four new
divisions to defend the eastern sector, including two divisions that will be
part of a proposed mountain strike corps. The two defensive mountain divisions
are already functional, while the mountain strike corps and an armoured brigade
are currently being cleared.

But no amount of soldiers can provide a
foolproof defence along hundreds of kilometres of rugged mountain terrain. And
in raising division after division of defensive troops, India risks falling
into the Pakistan trap: getting involved in a competitive military build-up
against a giant neighbour that has far greater resources of money and military
power.

Instead, the Indian Army needs to rethink
its strategy, relying on local partnership as in the 1950s, rather than on an
overwhelming presence that could start being resented. This must involve a
three-fold action plan: firstly, recruit at least twenty territorial army
battalions from local tribes, which will defend their homeland fiercely against
the Chinese, rather than relying on regular army battalions that are posted
into these unknown areas from their bases thousands of kilometres away. These
local tribal battalions must form the first line of defence.

Secondly, rather than committing the bulk
of our regular army battalions into defensive deployments aimed at stopping the
Chinese at the border, reorganise these formations into offensive strike groups
that are geared, trained and equipped to retaliate against any Chinese
incursion with counter-incursions into Tibet. There should be 8-10 such fully
developed contingency plans ready for execution, along with the resources to
execute them with.

Thirdly, create the infrastructure of roads
and railways in Arunachal and Assam that will be needed to mobilise the
offensive strike groups and transport them to the border fast enough to
pre-empt any Chinese counter deployment. This is perhaps the most essential step
needed, since it will serve both a military and civil purpose. In providing
road connectivity to villages along the McMahon Line, we are providing a
lifeline that ties them to India.

Sunday, 14 October 2012

Some cities, just a fortunate few, remain
coloured by their history, visibly enriched by reminders of centuries gone by.
Residents of Delhi like us routinely walk past 500-year old monuments with
scarcely a thought for the shared past that they evoke. But on a visit to
Lahore, in so many ways Delhi’s historical twin, we notice so much that we take
for granted here, displayed as it is in a different, yet familiar, framework.

Bashir, our taxi-driver in Lahore, is a
portly, loquacious, shalwar-clad 54-year-old with the energy and verve of
someone half his age. Finding a taxi is never easy in Lahore since locals
prefer auto-rickshaws, but we hit the jackpot when we chanced upon Bashir: he
was a natural tourist guide. Asked to drive us around Lahore, Bashir shot back
“which Lahore?” Seeing our bemused looks, he elaborated, “There is a Mughal
Lahore, a British Lahore and a Pakistani Lahore”.

“Let’s start with British Lahore,” we said.
It was close at hand both physically and in family consciousness; Sonia’s Lahori
parents had brought her up on tales of the paradise that was their ancestral
heritage. This deep-rooted Lahori pride (inexplicable to outsiders!) seems an
ingrained feature of the city’s residents. When Bashir learned that Sonia’s
family was from pre-partition Lahore we were adopted like prodigals. The
conversation quickly switched from Urdu to Punjabi.

Driving down the leafy Mall Road, we felt
the irritation ebb after our flight to Lahore the evening before. The ancient
Pakistan Airlines 737-300 aircraft had developed engine trouble in Delhi,
mercifully before take-off, and it had taken five hours and a component
borrowed from Air India to get us to Lahore around midnight. The day before had
been Youm-e-Ishq-e-Rasool (Day of Love for the
Prophet), misguidedly declared by Pakistan’s government to prove that they were
as good Muslims as the ones who were already rioting against Innocence of
Muslims, a blasphemous film that had denigrated the
Prophet. The government’s licence unleashed what was effectively
state-sanctioned rioting, leading to the deaths of protesters after a large mob
gathered at the US Consulate in Lahore. Washington and London, as well as
others, had issued advisories against travel to Pakistan.

But today, it was sunny, pleasant and utterly
normal, highlighting the astonishing ability of Pakistan and its citizens to
oscillate between extremes.Driving down Mall Road we admired the stately, whitewashed colonial-era
buildings from the time when Lahore was the heart of “the north west”. From
here the British administered vast swathes of the Punjab and the North West
Frontier up to the Afghanistan border, the still-disputed Durand Line. Before
them, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Lahore-centred empire had extended even further,
well into Afghanistan.

Bashir pointed out the magnificent Dinga
Singh Building, where one of Sonia’s grandfathers had worked and the National
Bank building that had been the office of another. Passing Luxmi Chowk and the
old High Court, we head towards the Anarkali Bazaar, the centuries-old market
named after the legendary slave girl who was put to death by Emperor Akbar
after Prince Salim (later Emperor Jehangir) was enraptured by her. Bashir, like
us, has heard the story through the immortal film, Mughal-e-Azam, in which Dilip Kumar and Madhubala memorably played the tragic
couple. Anarkali’s mausoleum is nearby, as is that of Qutb-ud-din Aibak, the
Mamluk monarch who built the Qutb Minar in Delhi.

Next we come to the grand Lahore Museum,
outside which stands the 14-foot-long Zamzama,
the largest cannon cast in the subcontinent. Built for Afghanistan’s talismanic
monarch, Ahmed Shah Durrani, legend has it that thousands of Lahori kitchen
utensils were melted down for making the gun. Durrani employed the Zamzama in his destruction of the Marathas in the third battle of Panipat
in 1761, the bloodiest battle ever fought till then. En route to Kabul after
that victory, Durrani left the Zamzama with his
governor in Lahore since he did not have a carriage strong enough to carry such
a heavy gun back to Kabul. Later, it was fought over by assorted Sikh and
Afghan chieftains who all believed it was a battle-winner. To this day, Afghans
lewdly refer to their Casanovas as “Zamzama”.

Rudyard Kipling, who lived in Lahore from
1882 to 1887, found his earliest muse in the city, which he chronicled in The
Civil and Military Gazette. Lahore figured in his
magnificent tale, Kim, as the base for the young explorer’s travels across the
subcontinent. The novel, in fact, opens at the Lahore Museum, with Kim perched
“astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick
platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher --- the Wonder House, as the natives call
the Lahore Museum.”

Architecturally grand as the Lahore Museum
is --- like many old buildings in Lahore, was designed by the architect, Sir
Ganga Ram --- its piece de resistance is the 2nd
century, Kushan sculpture of Fasting Siddhartha
in the dramatically realistic style of the Gandhara School of art. Depicting
Siddhartha after six years of fasting, every rib and vein carved into his
emaciated frame depicts the tribulations that led to his enlightenment.

Bashir is pleased at how thrilled we are
when we emerge from the museum. A devout, beard-wearing Muslim, he is a very
long way away from the Taliban’s antipathy to Buddhist sculpture.
Fundamentalism may be gaining ground in Pakistan, but Lahori taxi-drivers have
apparently not yet bought into it. Bashir reveals that his mother was from
Dehra Dun and his father from Ambala.

A short drive from the museum is Shadman
Chowk, where the British hanged Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev Singh in
1931. Pakistani civil society has long agitated for renaming the place Bhagat
Singh Chowk. Soon after we returned to India we learned that the Punjab
government had agreed to do so.

Despite the pleasing array of Gothic and
Victorian style buildings from the British Raj, time has not stood still in
Lahore. The famous Gawal Mandi, a pedestrians-only food street that served
sumptuous, dhaba-style, Lahori food, has been pushed out of central Lahore by
security concerns.

And the old Race Course, which dates back
to 1924, now has a posh continental restaurant called The Polo Lounge, owned by
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar along with a sister establishment
in Islamabad that overlooks the Margala Hills. This top-of-the-line eatery that
has just 30 seats is billed as “The only setting of its kind where you can
enjoy gourmet cuisine while watching a game of Polo.”

We dine at The Polo Lounge as part of an
Indian delegation. The tables are done up thoughtfully with ribbons in a
tricolour theme; each seat has a printed menu with the Indian and Pakistani
flags. The guest list includes a former Pakistani army chief, a former navy
chief, and Pakistan’s most successful businessman and only dollar billionaire,
Mian Mansha. Like Punjabi businessmen on both sides of the border, he is
pushing for better relations and freer trade. With the polo field providing a
darkened backdrop through large windows, we dine on prawn soup, forest salad,
and herbed and spiced grilled fish. By the time dessert --- chocolate puddle
cake --- arrives, everyone is groaning.

Good eating is an essential component of
Lahori culture, dovetailing quite naturally into late rising --- no shop opens
before 11.30 a.m. or closes before 11 p.m. But, after another day of
sightseeing with Bashir, we have no time for shopping. Instead, another
interesting evening awaits us at the home of one of Pakistan’s super-rich. Like
in many wealthy Delhi homes, a large Hussain greets us as we enter. Unlike
Delhi’s wealthy, though, the home has a large library with a painting by
Vincent van Gogh adorning the mantelpiece! Most of the Pakistani guests lament
the fruitlessness of India-Pakistan hostility and how leaders on both sides
should mend fences. There is little understanding in Pakistan, and this is true
from milkman to millionaire, of how much India has been alienated by
cross-border terrorism, particularly 26/11.

We start late the next morning; Lahore is
insidiously seeping into our systems. But the lethargy vanishes when Bashir
draws up at the Badshahi mosque, which Aurangzeb built between 1671-73. Sadly,
the wall outside has been recently painted, but as we enter we are overwhelmed
by the sense of space, one of the greatest features of Indo-Islamic mosque
architecture. Once the world’s largest mosque, the Taj Mahal and its platform
would fit comfortably inside the main courtyard that accommodates one lakh
worshippers. A nikaah is finishing as we arrive,
a simple ceremony with a shy bride. We are offered many rounds of mithai.

In the enclosed garden outside the mosque
is the Hazuri Bagh, which Maharaja Ranjit Singh (who conquered Lahore in 1799)
used as his baradari or court of audience. Nearby
is a red stone colonial building, the grave of Allama Iqbal, one of Pakistan’s
founding heroes along with Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Ironically, and to his lasting
regret, he had earlier written the stirring song, Sare Jahaan se Achha
Hindustan hamaara.

Forming the backdrop to the Hazuri Bagh is
the imposing Lahore Fort, or Shahi Qila, which Akbar built between 1556 and
1605. The staff there insists that we pay for tickets at the local rate of Rs
10, rather than the Rs 200 rate that foreigners pay. He says we are hum
zubaan (speakers of the same language). We had last
seen the fort by night in 2003, when a spectacular official dinner hosted there
had transported us back into the medieval era. With mashaals (fire torches) lighting the way and enormous doorkeepers in loose
black shalwar kameez, that had been like a movie
set.

That night we dine at Andaaz, a tony
Mughlai restaurant in the red light area of Hira Mandi that overlooks the
spectacularly lit Badshahi Mosque. Sadly, the mujras (dances) that Hira Mandi was famous for have given way to Islamic
austerity, but restaurants like Andaaz and Kuku’s try to capture a flavour of
the place. Also visible from our tables, as we bite into juicy tandoori prawns,
is the Dera Sahib Gurudwara, where the 5th guru, Arjun Dev, obtained
martyrdom in the river Ravi in 1606. Highlighting the duality of India-Pakistan
relations, we learn that this is where General Zia-ul-Haq housed Khalistani
terrorist leaders in the 1980s, when Punjab was aflame. Suddenly my prawn
tastes a little less juicy.

We say goodbye to Lahore with some regret.
Change is in the air in India-Pakistan relations; but there is never any
telling when another dip happens, closing down, at least temporarily, the
option of travelling there again.